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Going Nuclear: Notes from the officially unofficial book tour
I work in the analytical labs at one of Europe’s oldest and largest nuclear sites: Sellafield, in northwestern England. I spend my days at the fume hood front, pipette in one hand and radiation probe in the other (and dosimeter pinned to my chest, of course). Outside the lab, I have a second job: I moonlight as a writer and public speaker. My new popular science book—Going Nuclear: How the Atom Will Save the World—came out last summer, and it feels like my life has been running at full power ever since.
Edward T. Dugan, Nils J. Diaz, Edward E. Carroll, Jr., H. M. Forehand
Nuclear Technology | Volume 69 | Number 2 | May 1985 | Pages 134-153
Technical Paper | Fission Reactor | doi.org/10.13182/NT85-A33625
Articles are hosted by Taylor and Francis Online.
The development of a sound scientific data base that includes key information in the areas of neutronics, thermophysical properties, and materials for cyclic gaseous core reactors has been the objective of a lengthy theoretical/experimental research program at the University of Florida. The most recently completed phase of this program includes theoretical neutronics modeling and experimental verification. Static and dynamic neutronic experiments were conducted on the plasma core assembly at the Los Alamos National Laboratory to measure selected fundamental nuclear parameters in a gaseous core critical assembly in which a significant fraction (∼20%) of the fissioning took place in gaseous uranium hexafluoride (UF6) fuel; the balance of the fissions occurred in a ring of conventional solid driver fuel rods surrounding the central gaseous core region. Measured parameters included neutron multiplication factors, neutron flux spatial and spectral distributions, reactor decay constants and reactivity worths of both the gaseous UF6 and the solid driver fuel rods for various critical and subcritical configurations. Measured parameters were then compared with theoretically predicted values to determine the adequacy of various analytical neutronics schemes. Theoretical predictions obtained from the various computational schemes for key neutronic parameters were, in general, in good agreement with one another and also with experiment.